


Bullet Boy

by xxxxbjnjka



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Canon-Compliant, Drug Use, Post-Felina, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-15
Updated: 2014-07-15
Packaged: 2018-02-08 22:20:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1958220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xxxxbjnjka/pseuds/xxxxbjnjka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They say time heals but Jesse knows that’s a huge lie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bullet Boy

The fleeting moment of happiness crashes down as fast all of Heisenberg’s lies.

 

Whiteness blinds him as he pulls over to the side of the road, gasping for air that isn’t there. He can’t pull together many thoughts but one shines clear like the afternoon sun:

 

_I have nothing…. no one…_

____

He ends up somewhere in Washington.

 

He ditched the El Camino back in New Mexico, but took the three thousand dollars conveniently stuffed underneath the passenger seat. While he always wanted to go to Alaska, that’s a pretty stupid idea because his face is all over the news and he doesn’t want to be locked up in a cage again.

 

The Greyhound bus comes to a stop and he pulls the filthy sweatshirt tighter around his skeleton body.

 

\--

“Dude, I don’t think you should be, like, buying. You kind of look like, um…”

 

The dealer’s voice trails off as Jesse stares him down and digs into his many pockets for the meth. He pulls out a teenth and puts it in Jesse’s open palm.

 

“That’ll be two hundred.”

 

Jesse’s fist clenches around the baggie. “What the actual _fuck?!”_

 

The dealer [who reminds Jesse too much of his old self for his own comfort] shrugs. “This shit was made by some mothafucking genius. It’s like, crazy pure!”

 

“Whatever.” Jesse gives the guy his two hundred dollars and storms away. When he opens his palm again, he sees that the meth is unmistakably his.

 

In fact, he probably cooked it in the compound.

 

\--

 

He never smokes the meth. He promises himself he never will.

 

\--

 

Andrea comes to him in his dreams. An angelic light frames her face and her eyes remind him of milk chocolate.

 

She takes his hands and kisses each finger before tracing her own up to his neck. She places butterfly kisses on his jawline and toys with the bottom of his shirt before pulling it over his head.

 

When she sees the scars Andrea cries. Jesse cries.

 

“Baby why you?”

 

She leaves in the morning and doesn’t come back.

 

\--

 

Jesse finally rents a house. It’s a one-bedroom place on the outskirts of a town in the middle of nowhere. He has no money, but at least he has a place to stay.

 

When he sees that the bed sheets are blue, he rips them off and buries them in the ground where he will never see them again. And then he rips a floorboard up and hides the meth in there.

 

Jesse sleeps cold that night.

 

\--

 

He needs a job. He’s living off the waning supply of crap food he bought with his remaining two hundred dollars and he isn’t going to last long.

 

The problem is Jesse can’t imagine working. He can’t imagine having to obey orders all the time, being told what to do…

 

Heisenberg screams at him and tells him to stop being a little bitch. But no matter how much Jesses cries and apologizes, Heisenberg keeps yelling.

 

_“What the hell is wrong with you?”_

_“Did your mother drop you on your head as a baby?”_

_“Do you even know how to think?”_

Jesse cries more. He tries to find someone, anyone that will cry with him, but there is no one.

 

\--

 

The day after, Jesse goes into town.

 

There’s a family owned furniture store on the outskirts of town called Healy’s. Jesse musters up all the courage he can and goes in for an interview.

 

He uses the name Mike Cantillo and wears the nicest shirt he has [A dirty old flannel he found tucked deep away in the closet]. Mike Cantillo presents his pretty little illegal paperwork and goes for his interview. He spends the day making a jewelry box and he’s hired.

 

The manager even told him it was a very nice box. Jesse smiles for the first time in months.

 

\--

 

He dreams about Todd, holding a knife to his skin while singing a unrecognizable lullaby.

 

He wakes up screaming.

 

\--

 

Jesse buys a gram of heroin with his first paycheck.

 

\--

 

Jesse and Jane dance around the room to some forgettable eighties song. Jesse steps on Jane’s toes and Jane tells him it’s okay.

 

Jane isn’t happy though. When Jesse asks why she looks at the needle by the bedside.

 

“Why are you using again?”

 

Jesse looks at the needle, and then back at Jane. “To see you, baby.” He leans forward and kisses Jane’s lips.

 

Jane kisses back and they make love all night long. However Jane doesn’t feel the same and Jesse doesn’t understand why.

 

\--

 

They say time heals but Jesse knows that’s a huge fucking lie.

 

The voices are biting at his ears and they’re biting hard. They whisper taunts and jeers into his head all day and all night and _god why won’t they just go away?_

 

Jesse gazes longingly at the floorboards and wonders if he should just dig up the meth and shut up those fucking voices. He still has some H left but if he does it again he knows he’ll just face Jane’s disappointment and he’s done disappointing and he just can’t muster the strength to get up.

 

Mr. White watches him and Jesse swears he sees sadness in his eyes.

 

\--

 

He’s on a smoke break at work when this girl joins him.

 

She works as a cashier and Jesse learns by her nametag that her name is Esther. She has chestnut brown hair that stops just above her shoulders and heavy makeup framing her holly green eyes. She opens up a pack of cigs and offers him one.

 

“I’m good, thanks.” He shows her his box of Marlboros [he misses his Parliaments but they don’t sell them here] and lights a cig with a cherry red lighter with the words HEALY’S printed in white ink.

 

“Okay.” They smoke in silence for a while until she talks again. “What’s your name? You don’t really talk much.”

 

“Mike.”

 

“Hi Mike.” She extends her hand to shake and Jesse notices she’s really pretty. Like Jane pretty. “I’m Esther.”

 

“Yeah, I know.” Jesse takes her hand and realizes this is the first time he’s touched a real person in weeks.

 

“Y’know, if you ever need anything Mike I’m here,” she says. “I know I had a hard time making friends when I first came here, but after a month or so it gets better.”

 

“Okay.” Jesse drops his cigarette and crushes it with his shitty sneakers. _Does it really?_

\--

 

Skyler White’s on TV.

 

He’s at some deserted bar downing his third beer when a familiar [but different] face pops up on the screen. Her blond hair is now really long and heavy bags lay beneath her eyes and she’s skinnier and calls herself Skyler Lambert.

 

She sits across from the interviewer with her legs crossed and her hands folded on top of her one knee. She’s wearing a black dress that’s a little too loose for her body frame and is wearing a black headband that pushes her hair back to show off her sunken-in face.

 

The interviewer mainly asks about Heisenberg and Mr. White and Walter White and asks stupid questions like “ _did you see it coming?” “how could you live with a meth kingpin?” “why didn’t you go to the police?”_ and she answers with vague answers and distant eyes.

 

Jesse begins to zone out and thinks about the first time they went out into the RV when he hears his name and nearly jumps out of his skin.

 

“Now there are reports of Walter White’s partner Jesse Pinkman escaping his slavery in the Nazi compound and fleeing across the country.” _Jesse Pinkman? Who’s Jesse Pinkman?_ “If he’s still out there, what would you say to him?”

 

Skyler stops picking her nails and looks into the camera and for a minute Jesse feels like she’s talking to him. “I feel bad for him. Not only was he enslaved for months in that… place, but he was my husband’s slave too. I don’t think he ever wanted this.” She draws in a breath. “I think him and I are kind of alike. Both of us are victims of Walter White.” Tears are forming in both Skyler and Jesse’s eyes now. “I would just say to him to m-“

 

The channel changes to a football game and Jesse turns in the direction of the bartender.

 

“Hey!” Jesse shouts, hurriedly wiping the tears away from his eyes. “I was watching that!”

 

“Sorry man, I’m tired of all this Heisen-shit.” He shrugs and wipes down the bar. “Now you want another beer?”

 

\--

 

“Yo, man, this is like, not what I ordered!”

 

A kid who looks like he is just a few years younger than Jesse examines the custom-made table he made with disbelief.

 

“Uh, yeah it is,” Jesse says dully, putting the clipboard in the guy’s hands. “You ordered two by four foot black walnut table.”

 

The kid scoffs and shoves the clipboard back in Jesse’s hands. “Uh, no. I told you mahogany wood!” He rolls his eyes and crosses his arms. “Now I’m gonna have a shitty ass table for my party this weekend!”

 

“Look, sir, I wrote this down and I’m positive that’s what you said.”

 

“Are you really sure about that? ‘Cause it seems to me that half the time you’re staring into space.” The guy looks with disgust at Jesse’s face. “Are you even fit to work here?”

 

And all of a sudden he sees Todd in front of him, just inches away from his face. His face is calm but his eyes are angry. Todd reaches forward to touch his face ever so lightly and comes so close their lips are almost touching. “Jesse, will you ever learn?” Todd backs away a bit and gives one of his creepy smiles. “You’ll never be anything except a crying _pussy._ ”

 

Jesse screams and attacks Todd, flailing his arms in the general direction of where he was standing. _no shackles now, bitch!_ He tackles Todd to the ground punches him square in the cheekbone, and then in the jaw. However before he could hit his nose he feels himself being pulled away.

 

“What is fuck is wrong with you Mike?!” Jesse furiously blinks his eyes and notices that it wasn’t Todd he was punching; it was that bratty little customer. His boss is holding him by the shoulders, restraining him.

 

“Oh my god.” Jesse looks at the kid, who’s woozily trying to sit up. Fortunately it isn’t as bad as Jesse thought… but shit. “Fuck, I’m so sorry… I thought for a second…”

 

“Get out,” his manager says, his face red. “Unless you want me to call the police, get out and never come back.”

 

Jesse runs out ( _fuck, fuck, shit, fuck, shit)_ and sees Esther in the parking lot, smoking a cigarette by her car. She taps the ashes off the end and blows out smoke while looking at Jesse.

 

“Let me take you home Mike. You don’t look so hot.”

 

\--

 

They end up kissing. Jesse doesn’t remember how it started, but he remembers crying a lot, and then drinking alcohol that eventually led to kissing.

 

Esther pushes him into his bedroom, and then she has him pinned down on the bed. Esther takes her shirt off and then reaches down to take off his when Jesse panics. He tries to grab her hand but it’s too late.

 

“Holy fuck.” Esther stops kissing him and leans back so she’s straddling his hips. “Holy shit.”

 

Esther tentatively reaches forward and traces one of his scars from his middle abdomen to the waistline of his jeans. “Mike… what happened?”

 

The tears. Jesse feels them brimming at his eyelids. Will they ever stop? “I… got in a fight.”

 

“You got in a fight.” She doesn’t believe him.

 

 “Please, can we just fuck and forget about it?” Jesse pleads, watching Mr. White shake his head as he stands in the corner.

 

 “Mike… you can tell me what happened,” Esther says softly, running her pointer finger up and down his scars.

 

 “I already told you.” He puts on a fake smile and leans closer to her lips. “Now come here.”

 

 They fuck, but neither of them forget about it.

 

            --

 

Esther never calls him back.

 

            --

 

 

Jesse skips town the next week.

 

He sells his house to some dealer who agrees to pay him ten thousand dollars for the house. Jesse Pinkman would laugh at the kid and demand more, but he’s not Jesse Pinkman anymore.

 

He leaves all his shit behind at the house except for the baggie of meth and his crappy 2001 Silverado. He ends up driving south but he’s not sure where he wants to go.

 

He ends up in Bandon, Oregon, a beach town Jane probably would have liked. On the first night he sits in his car next to the beach and watches the sunset and he ends up crying (like always) when he remembers what Jane said about sunsets.

 

On the second night he stays in a motel called the Shady Oak while he chain-smokes a packs of cigarettes while watching a documentary on Walter White. Yeah, only two months and twenty-seven days after this whole thing happened and they have a full one and a half hour documentary out. Fucking bull.

 

The thing starts out with a backstory on Mr. White, about how he founded Gray Matter and then sold his share for five thousand dollars, missing out on the opportunity of a lifetime. And then it goes into how he taught at a high school and met Jesse Pinkman, a skinny little tweaker kid who flunked class and smoked weed near the garbage cans at the back of the school. They show a picture of Jesse as a high schooler and Jesse barely recognizes the face he sees.

 

The documentary goes through everything, from the RV days to Gus Fring with frightening accuracy. And then they start talking about how this Jesse Pinkman kid started working with the DEA. And how Hank Schrader was killed. And how Jesse Pinkman became a meth slave.

 

_abused…. tortured… tormented…_

_“does this rat ever stop crying?”_

“Kid, I got to admit, you’re a strong little rat.”

 

Uncle Jack is standing there above the bed, a cigarette hanging out of the side of his mouth and a gun in his holster.

 

“Please just let me go,” Jesse begs. His legs and arms are handcuffed to the bed. “I won’t tell. I swear.”

 

“I wish I could believe that kid.” Uncle Jack blows out smoke at the ceiling, watching the fan on the ceiling spin. “You just got fucked over.”

 

“Please.” Jesse begs. His scars are burning. “You know I never wanted this to happen. You know I’m not a rat.”

 

“Look, in a world of rainbows and lollipops, I might let you go.” Jack puts out his cigarette on the slip on skin between Jesse’s jeans and socks. Jesse screams and arches his back in pain. “But Toddy’s got some type-a fucked up boner for you.” Jack laughs. “I bet he dreams about a threesome with you and that Lydia bitch. And I care for my nephew. So the answer is no.”

 

“Please.” Jesse writhes beneath the handcuffs.

 

“Don’t beg with me, rat,” Jack spits, lighting another cigarette. “Now shut the fuck up unless you want a bullet in your kid’s head.”

 

“No!” Jesse screams. He jerks against the cuffs. “NO!”

 

_“So the real question is, where is Jesse Pinkman?”_

 

Jesse wakes up with a jolt, surprised to find he could move his arms and legs. He’s breathing hard and forgets for a second he’s not a meth slave anymore, that Uncle Jack is dead and gone. He also forgets that Jesse Pinkman isn’t dead and gone.

 

\--

 

Jesse stays in Bandon for another week. The motel is cheap and he has nowhere else to go so he settles for the little town. He walks along the beach and watches the sunsets and wishes Jane would watch them with him.

 

He also starts up the heroin again. He knows that it’ll cause a dent in his funds but he’s so desperate to see Jane that he doesn’t care. He shoots up while sitting on the beach at five o’clock just so Jane could watch the sunset with him. It takes only a few seconds for Jane to appear beside him, wearing a yellow skirt with a black crop top, a few inches of her white stomach exposed. Jesse thinks she kind of looks like a bumblebee.

 

“Isn’t it pretty?” he asks. He’s smiling so hard his cheeks hurt. Jane is here. She’s actually here.

 

Jane’s lips are pressed into a straight line. She parts them a few seconds later and smiles weakly at Jesse. “Yeah. It’s nice.”

 

“I miss you.” Jesse buries his head into her shoulder. “I miss you so fucking much.”

 

Jane remains still, staring straight ahead at the sinking sun. “I told you to stop using.”

 

Jesse’s smile fades away. “But I want to see you.”

 

“You’re going to kill yourself Jesse!” She stands up and wipes the sand off her skirt. “You don’t want to end up dead like me!”

 

“Jane, I-“

 

“No Jesse!” Her eyes are brimming with unshed tears. “I know it hurts! I know you’re lonely but drugs aren’t going to help you get through this!”

 

“But Jane…” his eyes are blurring and now he can only see the yellow and black colors of her. “It hurts so much.”

 

“Baby I know.” She sits back on the ground and wraps her arm around Jesse’s skinny figure. “I know.”

 

“I want to die,” he says, his voice squeaking. “I can’t do this anymore.”

 

Jane goes silent and kisses the top of his head with her full red lips. Jesse goes up to kiss them, to find some reassurance that _someone_ is there, but like always, there’s nothing.

 

No one.

 

\--

 

Jesse gets the fuck out of Bandon.

 

No. Fuck sunsets, fuck heroin, fuck disappointment, fuck PTSD whatever the fuck that stands for. Fuck Jane for always looking down upon him, fuck Andrea for not coming back. Fuck Walter White for putting him in that fucking cage, fuck the Nazi Gang, fuck Todd and his weird obsession with possession, and most of all, fuck meth.

 

He needs someone new, someone who doesn’t remind him of anyone of his past life.

 

            --

 

In California he drives past a hotel that reminds him a lot of the Crystal Palace. It’s called the Royal Court and is the type of place old Jesse Pinkman would have liked.

 

He pulls into the parking lot and tries to find his girl. He finds her smoking a cigarette against the stairs and he falls in love the second he sees her.

 

“Hey!” he calls, half running across the parking lot towards her. “What’s up?”

 

She puts her cigarette out in the tree planter next her and looks up at him with pretty blue eyes. “Whaddaya want?”

 

“You holding?” he asks, leaning against the stairs next to her. _Shit,_ she’s hot.

 

“I’m getting clean, asshole,” she spits, fishing another cigarette out of her pocket.

 

“Me too.”

 

“Like fuck you are.” She lights her cigarette and blows smoke in his face. “You want sex or no?”

 

“Yeah yeah yeah. Just tell me something.” Jesse leans closer and whispers in her ear, “You ever hear of Heisenberg?”

 

“Who hasn’t?”

 

“You know his wife? Skyler White?”

 

She squints at him, her blonde eyebrows kneading together. “I mean, I’ve seen a picture of her.”

 

Jesse pulls one hundred dollars out of his pocket and puts it in her hand, smiling. “You kind of look like her.”

 

            --

 

Young Skyler White blows him in a hotel room she lives in. His brain is mind numbingly blank; he stares the whole time at the painting on the wall behind her blonde head of two men, one young and one old, fishing together.

 

He’s drawn out of his thoughts when he comes and screams Skyler’s name. Young Skyler White wipes her lips with her skinny fingers and sits on the bed next to him.

 

“You’re Jesse Pinkman, aren’t you?”

 

Jesse sighs and stares at his tattoo on his hand. “Yeah.”

 

Young Skyler White bites her lip. “I won’t tell,” she says, watching Jesse trace his tattoo with his finger. “I’m not a rat.”

 

Jesse closes his eyes. He feels tears burning at the back of his eyelids again. “I’m such a fuck-up,” he breathes, trying to hold in a sob. “There’s nothing left for me.”

 

Young Skyler White watches him. He doesn’t open his eyes. He won’t let her see him cry. “It’ll get better. Bad things happen to all of us.”

 

Jesse lets out a laugh, except it comes out like a sob. “I doubt it.”

 

            --

 

Mr. White is screaming at him again.

 

He’s trying to sleep in the back seat of the car but Mr. White is spitting venom into his ears and he just won’t go away. Somehow Mr. White’s voice is louder than Jesse’s sobs, and no matter how much he covers his ears he can still hear that goddamn fuckwad’s voice.

 

            --

           

Andrea watches him with disapproving eyes, her arms crossed and her lips tight in a straight line. God, why did she come back now and why does she look so much like Jane?!

 

Jesse makes a line of meth on a CD he found in the car. Every voice in his head is screaming at him not to do it but Jesse just mentally flips them the bird and tries to block them out. He straightens the line with a business card and then rolls up a dollar bill to snort it up.

 

“Jesse, stop,” Andrea says.

 

Jesse ignores her and snorts the meth. Jesse feels like he’s hitting a homerun, yeah this is definitely his blue. He leans his head back and screams, _shit shit, this is good, yeah he likes this._

 

Andrea leans forward and grabs his arm with her fingers, trying to pull him toward her.

 

“Yo, get the fuck off me!” he spits, yanking his arm from her grip.

 

“Jesse, I’m just trying to help you,” she whispers, once again trying to grab his arm.

 

“Help me? Yeah I’m sure it helps that you disappear, like, three months ago, and never come back,” he snarls. “I’m not a goddamn baby.”

 

Tears are falling down Andrea’s face, except they’re red and leave marks as they slide onto the seat. “Come with me.”

 

Whiteness is beginning to cloud his vision as he snorts another line. _come high baby!_ “I ain’t doin’ nothin’!” he slurs, his tongue sticking to the bottom of his mouth.

 

“Jesse, please stop!” Andrea pleads, yanking away his bag of blue. _crystal clear, baby blue…_

Jesse turns to Andrea, but now instead of her Todd, is sitting there, his expressionless face boring into his soul.

 

“Oh Jesse, you became a slave long before you met me.”

 

            ---

 

Jesse loses count of the days. Now that he’s started up the blue again, he can’t get off of it. He needs it, he buys it every time he sees it, even if it means he’s running dangerously low on money.

 

He lives out of his car now, driving from town to town, getting high, eating at McDonalds, and then passing out in the back seat. He fucks a few girls here and there, none the same as Jane or Andrea. They all ask about his scars, about the swastika carved into his skin inside his left thigh, but he just smiles, too high to respond, and fucks them until scars are the last thing on their minds.

 

The ghosts of his past come to visit him from time to time, especially Mr. White and Andrea. Andrea comes whenever he’s high on meth, and kisses his scars and tells him it’ll all work out in the end. Mr. White is always there, never speaking, watching him as he screams and cries, but never even bothering to comfort him.

 

Jesse doesn’t even know what state he’s in right now, one night he thinks he’s in Arizona, another he thinks he’s in New Jersey. It’s an uncomfortable rhythm to life, but it’s not like he cares anymore.

 

            --

 

He learns from a fellow junkie chick that it’s Christmas Eve. That means it’s been about four months since it all went down. “ _That’s it?!”_  he thinks, trying to count the days, but losing track after counting to thirty.

 

Jesse decides he’ll get sober at least for Christmas, so maybe God doesn’t hate him as much. So maybe he’ll join Andrea and Jane in heaven and not be stuck with Mr. White, Todd, Uncle Jack, and all those other sons of bitches in hell. It’s a slim chance, but he’ll take it.

 

He stays the night with a girl named Brook. She has copper red hair and a tattoo that says something in French running up the side of her neck. It says “la vie est belle” and she tells him it means him is means “life is beautiful” in English. They both laugh about that a little bit and they go out and buy Christmas lights and decorations to hang out around the hotel room. Jesse sticks a tube of cherry red lipstick in his pocket to give to her tomorrow morning.

 

Brook offers him some H but he says no, he’s trying to get sober and she smiles and puts it away. They both lay on the bed cuddling while watching a Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and for the first time in forever, Jesse is sort of happy.

 

            --

 

Christmas morning and it’s snowing. Jesse can’t remember it ever snowing on Christmas, even as a kid when he would wear his pajamas inside out and flush the toilet three times at nine o’clock. The snowflakes remind him of crushed up meth, but he tries to block those thoughts out of his head.

 

Jesse wraps the tube of lipstick in an old newspaper and writes Brook in sloppy handwriting on it with a forgotten Sharpie marker while she’s still sleeping. He finds himself writing Brock at first, and then has to correct himself by making the ‘c’ into an ‘o’.

 

While Brook is sleeping, Jesse reads the newspapers and finds out he’s in New Mexico. The Land of Enchantment. The irony almost makes Jesse double over in laughter.

 

When Brook wakes up, Jesse gives her the tube of lipstick and she jumps up and down in excitement. She carefully puts it on in the mirror, smacking her lips and then planting a kiss on Jesse’s cheek. Then she takes him out to Waffle House for breakfast and Jesse eats the most delicious meal he’s had in what feels like years.

 

When it’s time to leave, Jesse is reluctant. He kisses her in the swirling snow and it feels like something out of a Nicolas Sparks movie. He watches her red hair disappear amongst the white fluff and wishes he didn’t leave.

 

            --

           

Jesse knows where he has to go. It’s New Years Eve and the snowstorm still hasn’t blown over, but that doesn’t stop him from driving into the heart of New Mexico straight to To’hajiilee. It’s stupid and he knows it, since the place is a crime scene, but he can’t stop himself.

 

It takes him a while, but eventually he finds the place where Mr. White and him had their first cook. Except this time it’s different. It’s not boiling hot, Mr. White isn’t standing in his tighty whities, and Jesse isn’t looking for a cow house. No, it’s entirely different.

 

He gets out of his car and tries not to see Hank and his partner with their brains blown out. He began to like Hank, even if it was for a split second. He wonders how Mrs. Schrader is doing. She was a nice lady.

 

He walks around for about an hour, despite his protesting body, and feels something hit his foot. He leans down and brushes off the snow and sand to find a cloudy gas mask.

 

“Fuck,” he whispers, turning the mask over in his hands. Written in faded pen on the inside of the mask it reads “PROPERTY OF J.P. WYNNE HIGH SCHOOL” in handwriting that’s obviously Mr. White’s. He sits there crouching in the middle of storm for a few minutes, thinking about rolling meth labs and nerdy old chemistry teachers.

 

And for the first time since he was released from that cage, he misses Mr. White. Sure, he was never a great person, he was condescending and cruel, but he was a father figure to Jesse. Maybe a little bit more. He didn’t kill Jesse along with the rest of the Nazi gang, so maybe that says something.

 

And like that, Mr. White is there. He looks younger and healthier, with a full head of hair and not as many wrinkles.

 

“Hello Jesse,” he says.

 

Jesse stands up, the gas mask still in his hands. He doesn't say anything.

 

“How are you doing these days?”

 

“Shitty,” Jesse laughs, digging his foot into the snow.

 

“You’re getting clean,” Mr. White said, taking a step towards Jesse.

 

“Not for long.”

 

“It’s a step in the right direction.”

 

Jesse shrugged and pulled his coat tighter around his shoulders. “It’s not like I’m gonna be a better person when I’m clean.”

 

“Son, you need to stop thinking that way.” Mr. White’s now just inches away from his face. “You’re digging yourself into a hole living this way.”

 

“How else can I live?” Jesse asks, his voice cracking. “It’s not like I’ll ever be able to start a family, get a job, or y’know, be happy or anything! I’m always gonna have to hide unless I wanna get locked up for the rest of my life.”

 

Mr. White watches him with warm eyes and takes his arm, pushing his jacket up to reveal his tattoo. “Do you know what your tattoo means?”

 

Jesse wipes a tear away from his red cheeks and shrugs.

 

“It’s a Borneo scorpion,” he says quietly, tracing his thumb along the dark lines. “It used to be used for protection and to show valiance.”

 

“So what?” Jesse asks.

 

“Jesse, this is my fault,” Mr. White whispers. “I’m so sorry.”

 

And with the wind, Mr. White is blown away.

 

            --

 

It’s September 7th, 2012. It’s been one year since Mr. White died and Jesse Pinkman escaped that wretched cage.

 

Jesse’s life isn’t anything near perfect. Todd still tortures him in sleep, his scars still burn, and he’s still haunted by the voices.

 

But he’s clean now. When Jane and Andrea visit him, it’s with love and encouraging words. Mr. White still watches him scream and cry, but sometimes he rubs his back and tells him it’ll be okay.

 

It’s been a year and Jesse’s still alive. He has nothing, no one, but he’s okay.

 

Jesse isn’t exactly an optimist, but he likes to think things may get better. 

 


End file.
